Game of Thrones will soon close out its buzzy, critically acclaimed eight-season run next year, putting an end to the zeitgeist that the HBO series creators David Benioff and D.B. Weiss ruled over for nearly a decade. But Benioff and Weiss will soon find themselves in the cockpit of yet another beloved franchise.

Lucasfilm announced the Game of Thrones creators’ Star Wars project earlier this year, but details on their new series remain scarce. We only have their prior work to pull from to imagine what Benioff and Weiss’ Star Wars films will look like, so our closest guess would be a grittier take on the sci-fi series. But Game of Thrones and Solo: A Star Wars Story star Emilia Clarke has a better suggestion for you: Star Wars on acid.

Update: We have added Disney CEO Bob Iger’s statement on this hiring and speculate on what it could mean.

J.J. Abrams may be bringing the new sequel trilogy to its conclusion with the upcoming Star Wars: Episode 9, but we’ll be visiting a galaxy far, far away for a long time yet. Disney and Lucasfilm have announced a series of new Star Wars movies from a duo with plenty of experience transporting audiences to bold and fantastical worlds: Game of Thronescreators David Benioff and D.B. Weiss.

As HBO learned through its prolonged dealings with hackers this summer, the internet is dark and full of spoilers. And as the network’s flagship shows nears its end, the frenzy for spoilers of just how Game of Thrones will conclude will soon reach its peak.

It’s no wonder that HBO will go above and beyond to prevent as many spoilers from hitting the internet as possible. The newest strategy: Game of Thrones is shooting multiple endings of its series finale.

Confederate seemed like an intriguing premise for an HBO series: an alternate-history science fiction show depicting an America where the South had won the Civil War, created by the showrunners of the huge fantasy hit Game of Thrones? How bold, how avant garde, how…revolutionary. But perhaps HBO didn’t anticipate the severe outrage that the announcement of the show would incite.

Immediately, pop culture critics called out HBO for broaching a subject that is still so prevalent and sensitive today, as well as whether showrunners David Benioff and D.B. Weiss, who have met their share of controversy over Game of Thrones‘ lack of diversity and reliance on sexual violence, are the right people to handle such a volatile topic.

But the team behind Confederate, David Benioff, D.B. Weiss, Nichelle Tramble Spellman, and Malcolm Spellman, said they did see the backlash coming.

Game of Thrones just began its penultimate season, but with the eighth and final season looming, we’ve been wondering what showrunners David Benioff and D.B. Weiss would do after its over. Would they take on a larger role on one of the Thrones spin-offs currently in development? Maybe make the jump to feature films? Go into hibernation after pouring their hearts and souls into one of the most difficult adaptations in TV history?

Now we know the answer: HBO has announced that the pair will be running a new drama series called Confederate that takes place in an alternate history in which the United States is about to enter a third Civil War. Looks like Amazon’s The Man in the High Castle will soon have some company in the “shows about historical events in an alternate timeline” category.Read More »

Earlier this year, “Battle of the Bastards” blew Game of Thrones fans away. Originally, as director Miguel Sapochnik previously told us, theepisode was larger in scale, but nobody would’ve figured that by watching Jon Snow (Kit Harrington), the wildlings, and many more go up against Ramsay Bolton’s (Iwan Rheon) army. Sapochnik, who also directed the season six finale, was present during this year’s Game of Thrones panel at Comic-Con, where he shared a few facts about the battle.

As they say at the Wall, our watch has ended. Well, at least for the next several months. Game of Thrones concluded its sixth season earlier this week and since then there’s been rampant speculation about what’s coming in season seven. Who’s in power, and who’s on their way down? What does the confirmation of a certain fan theory mean for a certain character, and what other fan theories might come into play next season? How will the new alliances upend the old power structure? And where the hell is Gendry? Has he just been rowing for the past three seasons?

And here’s another question: What do the people who actually make Game of Thrones have to say about what’s coming up next? In a post-finale interview, showrunners D.B. Weiss and David Benioff teased the next big threat to the Seven Kingdoms, and revealed roughly how many hours we’ve got left in Westeros. (MAJOR SPOILERS AHEAD for the most recent episode.) Read More »

Even as we look ahead to another thrilling season in Westeros, it may be time to start preparing ourselves for the very end. A new report indicates Game of Thrones could go out with abbreviated seventh and eighth seasons, meaning we may only have 13 episodes left once season 6 wraps up. Read More »

For a while now it’s been clear that HBO’s Game of Thrones series could outpace George R.R. Martin‘s A Song of Ice and Fire books. Now showrunners David Benioff and D.B. Weiss have finally admitted that it will. In other words, instead of the books spoiling the show, the show will soon start spoiling the books.

It’s an outcome both sides had hoped to avoid, but with Book 6 (The Winds of Winter) nowhere in sight, they’ve run out of options. “The show must go on,” said Benioff. Read more about Game of Thrones spoiling books after the jump. Read More »

The two men who’ve steered HBO’s Game of Thrones for several years running just chose their first feature film. The question, however, is when they’ll get to it.

Game of Thrones showrunners David Benioff and D.B. Weiss have a made a deal with 20th Century Fox to write and direct an adaptation of Dirty White Boys, a prison escape novel by Stephen Hunter. The pair are currently finishing the fourth season of Game of Thrones, and recently signed to do at least two more, so they haven’t even begun writing yet. But it’s a project they’re passionate about and want to make as soon as they can. Read More »